Your first steps in Linux

Discover all the core skills you need to start using Linux Mint.

When you boot into Mint for the first time, you’ll find it looks very similar to Windows. The default desktop is called Cinnamon, and is structured in a similar way to the Windows desktop: there’s the equivalent of the

Start menu, Taskbar and Notification area at the bottom of the screen, with desktop icons providing shortcuts to key locations.

Click the Menu button and up pops a menu with easy access to all your programs, grouped into categories. Speed things up by typing the first few letters of the program you’re looking for into the Search box and it’ll appear in the list of results, just one click away. On the left-hand side of the menu you’ll see some other handy shortcuts – at the top key programs like Firefox (web browser), Software Manager (for finding and installing new applications), System Settings (the Mint equivalent of the Control Panel), Terminal and files manager. At the bottom are buttons for locking, logging out and shutting down or restarting your PC.

Add your own shortcuts by dragging and dropping items into the list from the desktop or right-hand side of the menu. You can also pin shortcuts to the panel (Mint’s equivalent of the taskbar) at the bottom of the screen too – just right-click and choose ‘Add to panel’ to do so.

Mint’s panel is actually more configurable than Windows’ Taskbar – you’ll see lots of useful options in the bottom right-hand corner, and you can customise these, plus add new panels, simply by right-clicking the panel and selecting from the options on show.

Access drives

Mint works with a wide range of file systems, which means your existing NTFS and FAT32 partitions are visible from the moment you boot into the desktop. The best place to access your drives – and browse your files generally – is with Mint’s equivalent of the File Explorer. It’s named Nemo, and is accessible via the Files shortcuts you’ll find on both the pane and the Menu. You can also open it by double-clicking the

Computer or Home icons on the desktop.

The layout is similar to Windows 10’s File Explorer, with your files displayed in the right-hand pane, and a series of shortcuts to key locations on the left. You can also bookmark favourite folders (select the folder in question and choose Bookmarks > Add to Bookmarks) for easy access from here too. Nemo also supports tabbed windows, which work in a similar way to your web browser, albeit with folders. Press Ctrl-T to add additional tabs, which make it easy to switch between multiple drives and folders without cluttering up your desktop with lots of open windows. You’ll see an option for accessing your network in Nemo – click the Network shortcut in the left-hand pane to find other computers, and have your username and password ready if necessary.

You should find your PC’s hardware has been – for the most part – automatically detected and set up. Click the Menu and choose System Settings to review current settings under the Hardware section. You can source missing drivers from the manufacturer’s website if necessary.

Now you’ve dipped your toes in the water and discovered it to be not that deep (or cold), take your first system backup of your new dual-boot system using Redo Backup. Once complete, you can start to dig a little

deeper into Linux. Let’s start with the file system – Windows uses NTFS; there’s the universal FAT32 file system, of course, and now you’ve got a third file system, Ext4, in place. When you boot back into Windows you’ll find your Linux partitions are invisible – that’s because Windows can’t see Ext4. That’s why your shared data partition – if you created one – was formatted as NTFS.

Open the Nemo file manager again and you’ll find yourself inside the Home folder, which – if you manually configured your partitions when installing Mint – may be a separate partition. Like your Windows user folder, this contains all your personal data, but it also contains personal programs and settings too.

Click the Computer shortcut in the left-hand pane and you get to see Ubuntu in all its messy glory. Many of these folders can be ignored, while two worth noting are /media and /mnt. These are where shortcuts to all external drives and network folders are found. The key difference is that drives mounted to /media are done so on a per-user basis.

Key system tools

The following utilities help you tweak various parts of Mint without having to use the Terminal. Click System Settings to get a dialogue box similar to Windows’ Control Panel. Here you’ll find lots of useful tools for tweaking your installation: The Appearance section is where you customise Cinnamon’s look, but also look under Preferences for areas where you can change the Cinnamon desktop’s behaviour. If you select the Windows > Behaviour tab and flick the ‘Attach dialogue windows to the parent window’ switch ‘Off’ you can change the way Mint handles each separate dialogue box that’s opened if you prefer the way Windows does it.

Mint also includes a number of handy built-in tools – there’s the Disks tool (which we touch on in the ‘Share data with Windows’ box, left), plus Disk Usage Analyser, which enables you to see a graphical breakdown of how your drive space is being used. The System Monitor tool is, essentially, the equivalent of Windows’ Task Manager, and the Update Manager is where you go to keep Linux up to date.

The Terminal

At some point you’ll need to access the Terminal. And once you’ve done so, you’ll quickly realise it’s the best way to do certain things. At the very least, familiarise yourself with the basics with this handy list of commands and you can press tab to complete commands and even file/folder names:

dir – lists the contents of currently selected directory. cd – for changing directory – use cd .. to move up a level, cd foldername to move to a subfolder within the current directory or cd /home//Downloads to jump to a specific directory. Note that folder names are case sensitive. To jump back to your home directory, type cd ~ at any time.

cp – copy files. Other file-management commands include mv (move), mkdir (create folder) and rm (delete file).

sudo – performs a task as an administrator. This is the equivalent of right-clicking a program in Windows and choosing ‘Run as administrator’. The command precedes other commands (eg, sudo apt-get install syncthing ), and you’ll need to provide your password the first time you use it.

apt- get is a tool for managing and installing packages. Use apt-get install to install a package,

apt-get upgrade to update all existing software, and

apt-get check to look for problems with software (known as broken dependencies).

wget downloads files to your Downloads folder: eg

wget http://address.com/filename.gzip .

To find out more about the Terminal, check out the beginner’s guide at www.ryanstutorials.net/ linuxtutorial.

The Nemo file manager works in much the same way as File Explorer does in Windows 10, so you won’t struggle to browse your hard drives.

Take more control over your Cinnamon desktop using the System Settings tools